BOOKMONGER
Le Guin continues to inspire
This week’s books
‘Hernes’ by Ursula K. Le Guin
Four years have passed since
Ursula K. LeGuin breathed her
last, but the iconic Portland writer
continues to inspire and infl uence.
For instance, the nomination
period has just opened up for the
inaugural Ursula K. Le Guin Prize
for Fiction, which seeks to encour-
age authors whom Le Guin might
have once envisioned as “realists
of a larger reality, who can imagine
real grounds for hope and see alter-
natives to how we live now.” The
fi rst award will be announced on
her birthday in October.
To name another tribute, a
lovely edition of “Hernes” was
released last year, an updated edi-
tion more than three decades after
its publication as the fi nal piece
in LeGuin’s collection “Searoad.”
Conner Bouchard-Roberts, the
fellow behind the shape-shifting
micro-press called ‘Winter Texts,’
believed this slim but densely
detailed story deserved to stand
on its own. He decided to obtain
the rights to print up a limited edi-
tion of 150 books last spring and
distributed the copies by hand and
snail mail to just a handful of inde-
pendent bookstores, the closest for
Coast Weekend readers being Can-
non Beach Book Co.
Even if you don’t live in Can-
non Beach , I daresay this thought-
fully designed paperback volume
could be worth the trip. The story
is captivating.
Le Guin’s powers of description
are immersive. Readers will feel
the thrumming ocean and smell the
salt spray in the fi ctional Oregon
coastal village of Klatsand, where
four generations of women make
their home. As daughters become
mothers and pass on what lessons
they can, they also have to stand
back as their children make choices
of their own – or simply deal with
the hand they’ve been dealt.
At some point this matriarchal
line picks up the Herne surname
from one of the men who come
Winter texts – 160 pp — $15
‘Dispatches from Anarres’ Edited
by Susan DeFreitas
Forest Avenue Press – 400 pp
— $18
into their lives for a while, but Le
Guin’s indelibly rendered novella
is about the women and their shift-
ing concepts of nurture and power.
There is another book worth
mentioning in this discussion.
“Dispatches from Anarres” is an
anthology of more than two dozen
stories by Portland-based writ-
ers wishing to pay tribute to the
woman who had been the Rose
City’s grande dame of letters.
The stories are far-ranging, just
as Le Guin had been in her own
work. Readers will fi nd futuristic
worlds in these pages, as well as
hallucinatory homelessness on the
streets of Portland, furtive female
integration of 19th century polar
‘Hernes’ is by Ursula K. Le Guin.
exploration, and the trickster tales
of cousins Ib and Nib.
The themes are far-ranging –
from coming-of-age, to gender
oppression, to violence in society.
At the end of each piece, the
authors make brief statements
about how Le Guin’s work infl u-
enced their own. And these, too,
are far-ranging.
Taken altogether, “Dispatches
from Anarres” is a complex stew
‘Dispatches from Anarres: Tales
in Tribute to Ursula K. Le Guin,’ is
edited by Susan DeFreitas.
of stories, a fi rehose of ideas. But
this anthology also supplies incon-
trovertible evidence that Le Guin’s
infl uence endures.
The Bookmonger is Barbara
Lloyd McMichael, who writes this
weekly column focusing on the
books, authors and publishers of
the Pacifi c Northwest. Contact her
at Barbaralmcm@gmail.com
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